CONTENT WARNING: This article discusses content that some readers might find distressing
Last year, Dean Lewis — the ARIA Award-winning singer known for heartfelt hits like “Waves” and “Be Alright” — found himself in the middle of a social media storm. Multiple women took to TikTok to allege inappropriate behaviour with the 40-year-old star, raising questions on the inherent power imbalance with a celebrity and their fan base.
The backlash was swift. Lewis issued a seven-slide apology on Instagram, pulled out of both the ARIA Awards and the TikTok Awards, and seemingly disappeared from the internet. Today, news broke that Universal Music parted ways with the singer following a ten-year relationship. His apology acknowledged a decade of “embarrassing” conversations with consenting adults, admitted his behaviour had hurt people, and said he planned to start therapy and take responsibility for his actions — but denied anything happened without consent.
PEDESTRIAN.TV spent several weeks talking to women about their experiences with Lewis. They said they were left feeling confused, dismissed, and in some cases, emotionally impacted by the shift from fan to confidant to casualty of Lewis’ alleged behaviour. Many described a similar pattern: feeling specially chosen at first, then uneasy or sidelined once things moved into more personal, sexual territory. Lewis did not respond to detailed requests for comments.
It’s raised difficult questions about boundaries, and what happens when private connections with public figures spill into the public eye.
Instagram DMs, ‘daddy’ & more: what women are alleging about Dean Lewis
The women who spoke to P.TV described eerily similar stories: a tag on Instagram after a concert would lead to a response from Lewis, which would kick start a heavy DM relationship that sometimes turned physical.
*Mia, now 23, said she first crossed paths with Lewis in 2021, after a friend took her to one of his Australian shows when she was 21 years old.
She wasn’t a superfan at the time, but later posted a video from the gig on Instagram and tagged him. He slid into her DMs.
From there, Mia said the two began chatting regularly, first over Instagram and then by text and phone. She described weeks of flirty back‑and‑forth messages, where he complimented her and made her feel like their connection was special, telling her things like he’d “love to keep chatting” and hinting at the idea of them spending time together in person.
She said that as the messages kept coming, the excitement of having a famous musician pay her so much attention grew — especially when he started talking about the possibility of flying her to Los Angeles to see him.
But Mia claimed the tone flipped once they moved from messages to calls.
“The first red flag was on the phone, he was a completely different person to when he was texting at first,” she told P.TV.
“He straight off the bat was like, ‘You refer to me as Daddy’. And I was like, ‘Okay’. I was 21. I did this stuff. I wanted to go to LA. I just did whatever he wanted.” But Mia claims that as much as she’d try to appease him, it never seemed to be good enough.
“He would get so angry,” she continued. “He would try and call me at work and I’d be like, ‘Hey, like I’m at work. Can I call you later?’ He’d get so angry — ‘No, you need to answer me now’.”
“The way he would speak to me was disgusting, like absolutely foul..
“He would constantly make me call him ‘daddy’, he would always remind me that I was 21 and he loved that I was so young.”
She added, “My dad passed away and I told him that. He was like, ‘Oh, I’m so glad that you don’t have a dad, so I’m the dominant man in your life’.”
In the seven months they were in contact, Mia said the fear of missing his calls would keep her up at night.
“There were times I was genuinely scared to sleep because I was worried I’d miss his call and anger him,” she said. “He would make me ring him and he was like, ‘Get on your knees on the side of your bed and you apologise’. So he would make me do all this stuff on the phone like getting on my knees and apologising to him.”
Mia alleged that Lewis asked if she would delete her social media because “he [didn’t] want anyone else knowing about [her]”.
In October that year, Mia got a boyfriend. She said she chose to ghost Lewis rather than end things outright because “he wouldn’t take no for an answer ever” and the idea of confronting him gave her “way too much anxiety”. Mia said she kept the situation quiet for a long time and was “not prepared to expose him” herself, but decided to share her story after seeing other women describe similar experiences online.
A common thread running through these stories is just how young the women were when their relationship with Lewis first took shape. (Lewis has publicly denied any relationship began when the other person was underage and P.TV is not suggesting otherwise.)
*Lila, 22, met Lewis at his 2023 Toronto show when she was 19 years old. She told P.TV she was chosen by Lewis’ personal assistant for a surprise meet and greet with the singer. After their meeting, Lewis followed her on Instagram and the two began to message, with Lewis ultimately asking for her phone number.
“I accused him of pranking me,” she told P.TV. “I was like, ‘Dean Lewis is not asking for my number. Like, you’re pranking me. Like, what is happening?’”
Lila and Lewis texted back and forth nonstop. In hindsight, Lila describes this as love bombing. “Looking back at it, it’s like the weirdest stuff,” she said. “But when I was in that situation, I was like, ‘Oh my god, he actually loves me so much’.”
She acknowledged she went along with the dynamic, saying she never told him to stop or that it was weird because she genuinely believed she was the only one he was talking to.
“I cannot say that I didn’t go with it. I never said, ‘I don’t want to talk to you anymore. This is weird or whatever’, because back then I thought like I’m the only one. Maybe this was delusional.”
As the messages kept coming, Lila continued travelling to see him perform at a run of US shows she had already booked before they began talking privately. One night, she found herself stranded after his show, and Lewis offered her his personal hotel room (he wasn’t using it). “He was like, ‘I have this room, you can go in there’,” she said. “He called me an Uber. That was really nice. I was like, ‘Oh, maybe he’s just really caring and like a really nice guy’.”
Lila said things only became tense with Lewis when she attended a few of his shows in the US without telling him. “That was always the point where he got really mad. He saw me in the crowd and afterwards, I would text him, ‘Oh, the show was so great or whatever’. And like he would be like, ‘Oh my god, like you were there. Why didn’t you tell me? What’s up with that? We could have hung out’.”
But that seemingly nice rapport was short-lived when Lila went to Hawaii for Lewis’ show and didn’t tell him. “I was in the back, and he saw that I was there. The next day he called me, and he lost his mind about me not telling him that I was there. He was screaming at me that I was playing with his feelings and that it’s so crazy of me not telling him,” she claimed.
“I was like, ‘Oh my god, like so sorry’. He made me apologise, and I did nothing wrong.
“Later on, I found out that during that time there were like all these other girls and he was telling me that I’m playing with his feelings.”
For some, contact began at a gig. *Kimberly, 25, met Lewis at a 2022 meet-and-greet when she was 21. She gave him her number, and soon after received Instagram and Snapchat calls from him. “He would call me once or twice a day and ask me to talk dirty to him, call him daddy, and regularly talked about wanting to meet up for anal sex,” she alleged.
Like others, Kimberly admits she was initially “fangirling over the attention”, but “the frequency and way he demanded things was overwhelming”. Eventually, she cut off all contact, realising “it wasn’t right, and that [she] probably wasn’t the only one”.
For these women, what began as a thrilling interaction with a famous musician quickly took a turn. Sexual requests and role-play — specifically being called “daddy” — become the centrepiece, met with any hesitation meeting mockery or disdain.
Alicia Wagoner (@swagoner94), now 31, said her interactions with Dean began from a place of pure fandom.
She told P.TV she had loved his music “for a very long time”, and would occasionally slide into his DMs as a fan. In 2022, when she was 29, she noticed he was engaging with fans on TikTok while in Malibu, California, where she also happened to be. So, she joined in on a trend he was interacting with and asked him to check his Instagram DMs.
She said that was the moment he started actually seeing and reacting to her messages: liking them, laugh reacting, watching her Stories and going back through her grid to like old photos.
From there, Alicia said the contact slowly shifted from passive social media engagement to something more direct. At one point, she recalled, he sent a one‑word DM — “mobile?” — and although that message later disappeared in vanishing mode, she responded by giving him her number “in case [he] ever changed [his] mind” about meeting up.
About a week later, he called her. On that first call, she was expecting the emotional, slightly awkward “sad boy” persona she knew from his music. Instead, she alleges he dropped his voice and immediately steered the chat in a sexual direction, asking if she would call him “daddy” and whether she would “make him feel good” and “be a good girl”. Even though she told him early on that she was “not into the daddy thing”, she said he kept pushing the dynamic.
Despite her discomfort, Alicia and Lewis chatted for about a year. In 2023, Alicia said Lewis rang her ahead of his San Francisco show to suggest meeting up. She decided to “do it for the plot”, answering his next call with a “‘Hey, daddy’.”
The next morning, she drove from LA to his hotel in San Francisco. Making out in the elevator was “cool” and “hot”, but things started to take a turn when they reached his hotel room.
Alicia said she began taking off her shoes, assuming they were about to “actually hook up”, but claimed Dean instead sat in a chair and told her to “let’s go”, signalling down to his lap.
“I remember being like, ‘You don’t even want me to disrobe?’” she told P.TV.
Without warning, Lewis pulled out his phone and started filming.
“Immediately I was like, ‘What the fuck is going on?’. But I was just so surprised and caught off guard I didn’t say anything,” she told P.TV.
“I hear women say this stuff like that all the time, and I never get it. And now I get it. ‘Cos I didn’t say anything.”
She later messaged Lewis, asking him to delete the video. He replied that he had.
In the weeks that followed, Alicia hoped they could have a “normal” hookup, now she’d done what he wanted. However, she said their dynamic didn’t change, and they eventually stopped talking to one another.
Alicia decided to share her story in 2024, in response to a TikTok video asking for “the craziest thing you’ve ever done when you had a crush on someone”. (She initially left Lewis’ name out of the video, but confirmed the story was about him in later videos.)
She explained in her video that she was hoping the two of them would interact, but was ultimately weirded out by her experience.
“He basically [made] it very clear that he is expecting for me to do things for him and for nothing to be reciprocated whatsoever. I was hoping like, ‘Can we chat? Can we have a drink?’” she said in her TikTok.
“And I tell him, ‘Listen, I’m not delusional. I know you’re on tour. I’m not expecting to date you. But I was expecting a normal sort of hookup situation. Not this weird one-sided thing.”
After her videos started picking up steam on TikTok, Alicia said Lewis reached out to her, saying he thought they “both liked the same thing”.
“It still felt very like, ‘You’re disposable’,” she said to P.TV.
“Especially when I started hearing from other girls, more than half of me was just like, ‘Ew, this is gross’, and then there was a part of me that was like, ‘Oh, I wasn’t special’.”
“I don’t think [this behaviour] can go on any longer than it has ‘cos [allegations have] been coming up every year and every year it just swept under the rug. It’s never gone this big before.”
Insider speaks on young women and fan ‘meet and greets’
As more women shared their stories, questions also began to surface about what was happening around Lewis behind the scenes. One former staff member who worked closely with him described a backstage environment where young women were a frequent presence.
“There were several times where people came to his green rooms specifically. I was never sure whether they were fans or people he’d invited to the show. But they always seem to be quite young,” the staff member alleged.
“I don’t think any of them were underage, of course, but they were all just always very young, pretty girls.
“The encounters never seemed to be very long. It would be like 20 minutes.”
The insider claimed that Lewis mostly kept to himself and would not hang out with his crew.
“Most of the time, he’d like to get to the venue really early, be in his green room by himself all day. And then when we weren’t in the green room, back at the hotel, just by himself all day,” they claimed.
“He didn’t really go out or do anything or interact with people. He was indifferent to everyone but himself, and the whole backstage vibe felt tense and controlled.”
The insider alleged that Lewis was quick to fire his staff whenever they “went against him”, alleging they’d seen multiple staff let go in their short time working with the singer.
“There were maybe a couple of people that [Lewis] seemed to respect, but there would not be a single employee that would say they enjoyed being around him,” they said.
“He’s this very charming guy and very nice on the surface, but as soon as something’s wrong, even if it’s out of other people’s control, it becomes a huge issue for everyone.”
When P.TV asked why these allegations have been kept hush-hush for so long, the insider said that it was because people wanted to stay in the music industry.
“I would say that’s why most people wouldn’t ever say anything negative about him for fear of getting a name within the industry that they don’t keep things to themselves,” they said. “That’s required in this industry [to an extent], but I think not when there’s someone who’s just so prolifically awful.”
Dean Lewis apologises to his fans
In October last year, Lewis responded to growing accusations with a lengthy apology posted to Instagram, acknowledging “embarrassing” actions but insisting “none of this is illegal”, and promising to seek therapy and set clearer boundaries.
“I understand why people are angry and disappointed after learning embarrassing details of intimate, private conversations and relationships I’ve had with consenting adults over the past decade, but I want to emphasise that none of this is illegal,” Lewis wrote.
“In the past few days, social media has made public a decade-plus of private conversations with a number of women, all of adult age. I don’t fault these individuals for having hard feelings, and I don’t want anyone defending me. I was breathtakingly dumb texting and flirting in the manner I have over many years.
“I should have been more sensitive that not everyone might look at our interactions the way I often did.”
He continued: “From the bottom of my heart, I want to sincerely apologise to those I’ve hurt. This is not only an apology to the women who have spoken up, but those who haven’t and felt hurt by my words or behaviour. I also need to apologise to my family and fans who I’ve gravely disappointed.”
He withdrew from the 2025 ARIA awards, in which his song “With You” had been nominated for Song of the Year. He was also removed from the Music Artist of the Year nominations at this year’s TikTok Awards.
“To present Dean with a genuine opportunity to step back and focus on his wellbeing, TikTok has agreed to remove Dean from nomination for their annual awards at our request,” a spokesperson for the social media platform told the Daily Telegraph.
Lewis continued to apologise in his Instagram statement.
“I need to make a lot of changes, some personal and some professional. Specifically, I am enrolling myself into intense therapy to make better choices and dramatically shift my approach to dating, relationships, and showing greater care to the women in my life. Changes will also include a whole new set of rules so there’s never confusion or questions about my intent when I’m engaging with fans or responding to messages in the future,” he wrote.
“I know it’s too much to ask for grace and forgiveness at this moment, but in time I hope to re-earn the trust of those I’ve hurt, and do better by those I’ve disappointed. I’m going to look after myself for a little bit while I get my head and life in order.”
PEDESTRIAN.TV has reached out to Dean Lewis’ team for comment.
Lead image: Getty
The post ‘Disgusting, Like Absolutely Foul’: Unpacking The Claims Against Dean Lewis & His Denial appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
